To have given Caroline to you, to behold her your wife, would have fulfilled every fervent wish of which she is the object.

Not you alone have been deceived; her conduct has been such as to mislead those who have known her from childhood.

St.
Eval, she is not worthy of you." Disappointed, not only at the blighting of every secret hope, not those alone in which St.Eval was concerned, but every fond thought she had indulged in the purity and integrity of her child, in which, though her confidence had been given to another, she had still implicitly trusted, the most bitter disappointment and natural displeasure filled that mother's heart, and almost for the first time since their union Mr.
Hamilton could read this unwonted emotion, in one usually so gentle, in her kindling eyes and agitated voice.
"Child of my heart, my hopes, my care, as she is, I must yet speak it, forget her, Eugene; let not the thought of a deceiver, a coquette, debar you from the possession of that peace which should ever be the portion of one so truly honourable, so wholly estimable as yourself.

You are disappointed, pained; but you know not--cannot guess the agony it is to find the integrity in which I so fondly trusted is as naught; that my child, my own child, whom I had hoped to lead through life without a stain, is capable of such conduct." Emotion choked her voice.

She had been carried on by the violence of her feelings, and perhaps said more in that moment of excitement than she either wished or intended.
St.Eval gazed on the noble woman before him with unfeigned admiration.
He saw the indignation, the displeasure which she felt; it heightened the dignity of her character in his estimation; but he now began to tremble for its effects upon her child.
"Do not, my dear Mrs.Hamilton," he said, with some hesitation, "permit Miss Hamilton's rejection of me to excite your displeasure towards her.
If with me she could not be happy, she was right to refuse my hand.